January 5, 2007

A new AP-AOL News Poll finds that while most Americans said 2006 was a bad year for the country, three-fourths thought it had been a good one for them and their families. Seven in 10 Americans feel good about what 2007 will bring for the country, and nearly 90 percent are optimistic about the new year for them and their families.

A Washington Post-ABC News Poll found similar sentiments about 2007. More than 60 percent of the public said it would be a good year for protecting against terrorist attacks, the state of the national economy and “the way things are going in this country.”

By contrast, more than six in 10 Americans tell pollsters the country is on the “wrong track.” Bush’s polls ratings are reaching historical lows. And most Americans don’t think the U.S. is winning in Iraq, according to a variety of surveys.

It's just human nature, isn't it? And it's not a bad thing either. You feel suspicious and critical about the government -- and you should. But then, as a healthy, balanced person, you trust things will work out all right.

33 comments:

People do not need reporters to tell them how things are going in their own lives. They experience it.

However, a lot of how we perceive things as going outside of our immediate circle is colored by the reporting of how things are going in our states, our country, and our world.

If the reporting is overwhelmingly negative, then you can end up with the dichotomy you mention.

I can spin this off to the point that can then be made about media bias, but the entire argument in that direction is fairly obvious from this point, so I'll save myself the typing and everyone else the reading, and hopefully avoid that partisan food fight.

Do polls really mean anything? Watch the average person on a local news show anymore. Even some schmuck shoehorned into a "man on the street" interview can recite sound bites with the best of them. Nobody is camera shy anymore, and nobody is content to claim they are unsure of anything. The result is usually a forced answer, tainted with a soft version political correctness. I suspect the same is true in these poll settings as well. We have all become Evan Bayh, more or less.

I think (yes I do think) that it has more to do with a complex life. There are a lot of positives in the workplace right now and there are a lot of good opportunities because the richy-riches of the world can't find anything to do with their money...and there is a lot of bad bad bad news looming on the horizon so we poor middle class get up each day and open the mail and its a lady or the tiger.

This is the same reason the Consumer Confidence Index is usualy rubbish. How many times have we heard the index shows consumers rate the economy as poor, yet the actual monetary indicators show those very same consumers are spending like... well, congress! The economy is measured by the flow of money through the wallet, not the eddies and tides of public opinion.

I agree with Gerry and will add that usually the poll questions are confusing.

Oprah who did a lame-o confused show on class/income levels (really it was about lifestyle). She had Robert Reich (an "expert") forecasting doom about the "disappearing middle class," and claiming there are now "no middle wrungs on the ladder," to financial security yet she has all these people on there to explain what makes someone low class or upper class,and most of them rose from low-income to middle or upper-income. Hmm. (by the way, if you have a knock off hand bag, you're low-class; you have a genuine Gucci bag, you are high-class - that was the show!

So the show was meant to be one of Oprah's "eye opening" downers about the haves and the have nots who are so screwed, but then she disproves her own point.

I hope I am making my point that I think people believe they are the lucky few who are OK, but most Americans are miserable since they are told that daily by the NYT, Katie and Oprah.

we poor middle class get up each day and open the mail and its a lady or the tiger

That's some mailing list you're on.

That "wrong track" question just baffles me. Considering that we're travelling on the same broad highway that Teddy Roosevelt laid out in 1900, what exactly is this wrong track? It's like six in 10 Americans are yelling from the back seat that they need to pee and can we stop at McDonalds.

It is not just human nature, or even American nature as someone else suggested. The proof of this is straightforward-- the only times in recent memory where this sort of disconnect has occurred, with people being dour about the current affairs but optimistic about the next year, even while being personally comfortable, are during the two Bush Presidencies. People were optimistic and content during the Reagan years, and during the Clinton years. If it was just human nature, it would have been the way it is now back then.

I am beginning to think a large part of the 90s boom and stock-market bubble was due to the media whipping people up into optimism because the media loved Clinton. I am beginning to think that Democrats have an advantage in how well the economy will do during their rule, due to the media being able to control consumer confidence.

Couldn't it be that if 2006 was actually bad for 25% of Americans and their families, that some portion of the other 75% might justifiably say that it had been a bad year for the country? I mean, aren't "bad year" and "on the wrong track" implicitly relative judgments?

That said, I find it most heartening that at least 60% of those who had a bad 2006 are optimistic about 2007. As far as I'm concerned, that shows some grit.

I'm reading a book on the Iwo Jima campaign, and a corpsman who was there remarked later that every man who landed thought he would survive; it would be some other poor sod who got hit. Same thing. Each man recognized the statistics but thought he personally would beat 'em.

You could call it self-delusion or you could call it optimism, and either way recognize it as a remarkably powerful American trait.

2) It's not a mystery, and it's not mostly induced by media, I bet -- it is deeply human. *I* will get by, *I* will survive, no matter how many reports on accidents or diseases or killings we run into.

PG, I am open to being convinced. Can you provide some to back your claim that you see this phenomenon in other countries?

I presented cases showing it is not the norm here. You just had to look at right track/wrong track numbers and also Presidential job performance numbers and the like during the Reagan and Clinton years. Americans were optimistic and optimistic during those terms. You can go back further and find the same during the Eisenhower years and at the start of the Kennedy administration.